Princess to a small band of merfolk in the vicinity of Mirror Lake. She's a gentle young spirit, quite unsuited for leadership or the dangers of war, but the crown carries many unfair burdens.
Merfolk fashion favors clothes which are loose across the chest and belly, since those are where the gills are, but always cover the upper foot-and-a-half of the tail, where the cloaca is. Clothes must function equally well in upright or quadruped stances, and are usually aerodynamic for underwater use as well. Formal wear like this dress would be the exception to that last point.
Merfolk are generally bigger, lumpier and more muscular than this. She's the exception to most cliches about their society.
HERE'S THE STORY SHE'S FROM! It's not a new one, apologies if you've already heard it before.
Beings of time, the Vay are named after Vayla herself out of respect for how much she oversees. There aren’t as many Vay as there are among the other classes of beings, but it can be argued that there are more because some of them are not fixed to one point in time. They are as mysterious and difficult to pin down as the goddess they’re named for.
The abilities of the Vay are inextricably linked to time. Some are more attached to the time of day, and others to the day of the week. Since they tend to look human and can even blend in among humans most of the time, sometimes the abilities may crop up much to their own surprise as much as anyone else’s. Some of the more documented Vaykind include:
Prophets, people who can see the future, are not to be mistaken with spellcasters who use magic to look forward in time. With Prophets, it is an innate ability that can lay dormant for generations among humans with Vay bloodlines.
Season witches wax and wane with the turning of the seasons. White (winter), Red (summer), Green (spring), and Gold (autumn) witches are most powerful at their respective solstice/equinox.
Time knights are able to step through time. There aren’t many of them, and they have strict rules about what they can do when they emerge in a new time. Their view of time is fractured compared to Vayla’s all-encompassing, linear view, and they pray to her often for guidance.
I don’t know if any of you guys have ever heard of an Orion Drive before, but it’s a method of spacecraft propulsion they proposed back in the 40s, but was never built for reasons which will be obvious in a minute.
(image from wikipedia)
So basically you have this armored plate sticking out the back of your spaceship, which is mounted to powerful shock absorbers.
The plate has a little hole in the middle.
The hole has a machine gun pointed through it.
The machine gun fires tiny nuclear bombs.
The nuclear bombs are set to explode about 50 feet behind the ship.
The idea requires no additional explanation.
Surprisingly enough for how ridiculous it sounds, the math works out very nicely, (they even made a proof-of-concept prototype back in the 50s that used normal bombs and flew very well) and the Orion Drive would doubtlessly have proven to be a very effective and efficient method of getting enormous payloads into orbit. Unfortunately, however, a number of factors including the NUMEROUS CATACLYSMIC POLITICAL AND ENVIRONENTAL HAZARDS meant that a working Orioncraft would be slightly problematic to use on or near the Earth. Additionally, its necessarily enormous mass meant it couldn’t easily be deployed far from Earth either. As a result, no functional Orioncraft has ever been made.
Perhaps in the future though, once space-based manufacturing facilities are able to assemble and deploy craft far from human civilization, or once man finds need for a vehicle to take him between stars, this old radicaltacular design will finally come into its own as an effective tool.
A highly specialized and expensive class of combat armor intended for delicate or complex strike applications where other options like missiles, drones, tanks or traditional infantry might be too clumsy or slow, or when collateral casualties are of high concern. Common applications are storming buildings and bunkers, or long-duration scouting missions. The Class-5 was designed with fully-robotic hands and feet, such that the operator’s own hands and feet don’t reach all the way to the ends of the limbs. This allows the suit’s hands to be a lot stronger and tougher, as well as able to be swapped out with other mission-specific attachments. The feet were driving cleats, able to extend outwards in a violent and sudden springing action, to aid jumping and running at speed. The Class-5 was precise and specific enough that they needed to be custom fit to the wearer, and they required advanced manufacturing techniques to maximize performance of the various components, so they cost a lot.
Stolen Class-5 units were favorites of the Time Knights. Since specific suits would only accommodate a very specific set of body measurements, it was frequent that each warrior could only find a single suit to match them, (or only a single warrior could be found to match a suit.) As such, the Knights often took strong ownership of their suits, and decorated and repainted them as they saw fit. A tradition arose of painting stripes/tying ribbons to the suits to symbolize the warrior’s past feats. The specific character drawn big in the third picture is supposed to be the girl from the Forest of Daggers, so she’s decorated to reflect the accomplishments in that story: a red and grey ribbon together means some dark and horid victory in battle, something that she felt guilty about. The purple, blue, and white ribbons together means she swore to bring somebody back from death, and succeeded after persevering through many trials. All time Knight suits (and ships) have two blue stripes permanently painted onto them somewhere, to represent the two oaths that they must necessarily have fulfilled: The oath to maintain the absolute secrecy of the cause, and the oath to stand by one another, and persevere until the war’s completion. Since they are eventually destined to win, it is a historical absolute that none of them had ever broken either of these oaths.
Process:
Picture 1: Idea for the basic silhouette of the design I was wanting to go for. Not thinking about mechanics at this step, just wanting to visualize and exaggerate a cool shape. I was really inspired that day by Evangelion, if you couldn’t tell by the words, which is why it looks all lean and gaunt. The extended limbs were put in to emphasize that look, and I liked how the the proportions came out. I also really liked the long helmet that blends into the back, since it calls to mind pillbugs and xenomorphs. I’m def keeping the long head. The visor is supposed to be either some kind of reinforced 1-way glass. Transparent from the inside, pale and opaque from without.
Second picture was drawn to clarify the mechanics and various internal/external details. Happy with how this came out, with the possible exception of the exposed flexribbing on the hips. The suit’s limbs will be actuated with electronic muscle cables directly beneath the outer layer, so I needed to make room (especially around the hips) for those too. It was apparent at this point in the design process that the suit makes the wearer’s butt look absolutely enormous, which is acceptable on grounds of hilarity.
Third picture is yeah boy. I should note that NONE OF THIS IS FINAL. I’m still experimenting with a lot of these designs, and this is still pretty early in the character-design process, no matter how much I like this one.
Fourth picture is a couple cool poses. The upper-middle pose shows how the driving cleats work. A jetpack modele could be attached to these suits, but I didn’t draw any of these with it. Left image showcases both the gravitic battery power source (birthday cake-sized cylinder on the upper back) and the big butt, still allowed on grounds of hilarity.
Fifth picture are a whole bunch of different character designs, as a proof-of-concept to show how swapping out weapons, paints, and clothes can result in an extremely wide variety of characters. Green one is a noir detective with a big iron on his hip, Blue one is waifu, Yellow one will kick your ass, Black one has cool braids and a nice color scheme, Grey one has a knife and a legacy to live up to, Brown one specializes in C L A M P, Orange one is hardcore.
Inspirations:
1. Bubblegum Crisis Hardsuits (I had various inspirations before, but seeing this anime really solidified what I want and what I didn’t want from this design, and gave me the idea to customize weapons and colors based on the wearers’ personalities.)
2. Evangelion Evas (There is very little cooler than the stance and the attitude these things radiate. Look at this duuuuuuuude. Inspired basic shape, as well as the idea of having an onboard AI helping with movement and coordination.)
3. M E T R O I D (I don’t think ANY power armor I EVER draw will be fully free from Metroid inspiration. I’ve been in love with this design ever since the tender age of 11 1/2 when I scrolled through Smash Melee’s roster of pokemon and marios and found a COOL ROBOT GUY. Mwah. Iconic. Lovely.)
A replacement for Wendy in my Gravity Falls stories, rather obviously. Though, I was wanting to leave out anything that made her predecessor seem physically special or attractive (read: red hair, green eyes, freckles, pale skin.) As I have mentioned before and I will mention again, imperfections and 'ugliness' are a heck of a lot more interesting and rich in storytelling potential than beauty. Hence Gale's weird tan lines, crooked nose, missing earring, and hideous jacket; they all have story behind them. My brother suggested that when designing characters I should "give everything a backstory" and I did.
Her overall appearance is based on a certain silhouette I had in mind from concept sketches, with an emphasis on being strong and wide. She would very much fill the 'Big Guy' trope in the company of average peers. Her enormous chin was based on Colonel Shikishima from Akira, because it's funny and fun to draw, and her color scheme was based on Roporak, the most physically desirable member of the Visorak Horde.
Designed for an infantry support role by the Grey Reign. Intended to be a lightly armed and armored frame that was both cheap to produce and easy to use, for the primary purpose of ferrying around large weapons and heavier cargo on the battlefield, while allowing oversight AIs a greater on-hand presence. The suit’s shoulders and hips were left unarmored to increase flexibility, and the weakness was addressed with a trio of ballistic tarps. The tarps would unfortunately yield to powerful weapons, and did not shield against landmine shrapnel from below. For this reason and others, the Class-3 proved more cumbersome than justifiable on the battlefield, and was eventually used exclusively for riot control and disaster response. Unlike some other models, the Class-3s do not augment the wearer’s speed or dexterity, as they possess neither jets nor driving cleats, and their onboard computer runs fully reactive by default (as opposed to allowing AI to predict the wearer’s next actions). The unit’s artificial musculature does increase user strength threefold, and its plates lend near-complete immunity to small arms fire and physical attacks. Powered by a standard-issue gravitic battery (the birthday cake-sized cylinder on the back).
Many of the Class-3 units were appropriated and used against the Reign by resistance factions, including the Time Knights. Unlike the Reign, which had to justify equipment expenditure against the value of the troops they were protecting, the Time Knights saw the stolen suits as next to worthless against the limited number of human lives among their ranks, and did their best to equip all their troops with armor whenever they could. The Class-3s were used whenever more capable models were unavailable. The guerilla groups enjoyed the Class 3 for their simple manufacture and construction, which made conducting repairs and fabricating replacement parts easy.
Process:
Picture 1: The basic look of this suit was inspired by the cool skirts and boots they wear in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, of all things, and I just made the rest of the suit match the arched-square shape of the legs. Had a hard time deciding on a helmet, but kind of soft-settled on the down-sloped one on the left because it looks like something a knight would wear. I’m still not 100% sure about the helmet.
Nausicaa: (I guess you can kind of see the resemblance? Maybe?? (???))
Picture 2: Sketches of various internal mechanisms. to show how the shoulders, elbows, and knees are structured. If you can tell what the heck my wordless pictures mean, then cool. (The hips would be built similar to the shoulders, but without the 3rd degree of twisting freedom. Conveniently hidden beneath skirt so I never have to draw it.)
Picture 3: A couple of troopers fighting a pair of monster worms. Drawn because WOW RADICAL
Picture 4: The same couple practicing sparring. On the left here you can see a backpack looped around the suit’s rear cargo rails.
Bad Cody, You made a bad robot suit Cody bad boy bad boy go sit in the corner
This is a very long post talking about POWER ARMOR. It has nice pictures. Keep reading if you’re a friggin’ neeeeeeeeerd
It’s no secret that I LOVE power armor.
When I started writing Gravity Falls fanfiction and making my own stories within that world, one of the FIRST things I did was design a suit of futuristic power armor for Wendy to wear. Here it is now.
This suit is DogShit.
And I don’t say that lightly.
I designed the suit based ENTIRELY on looks, with no thought for function whatsoever, much to my present-day shame. Back when I designed it I didn’t realize my GF stuff would become as big as it would and build up as much story and mythology as it did, so the entire thought process at the time consisted of “Oh, I’ll just take a generic Samus suit, remove details to make it easier to draw, and color it green and black”. But now, it’s many years later. And now that I’m trying to migrate away from GF, I’ve started drawing new concepts for the Time Knight suits, so I figured now would be a good time to pick apart everything this suit did wrong, and explain why I made the stupid decisions I did.
Let’s start with the jetpack.
The jetpack is designed very poorly. A human’s center of mass is somewhere around the hips, so if the jets were up here, and at this angle, they wouldn’t lift you into the air or help you jump at all, they would just flip you forward onto your face. If the suit were to have jets at all, therefore, it would need an additional set of rockets either somewhere on the legs, or on the front of the chest. I left out this additional set for reasons of artistry and simplicity, since they would be visually distracting on the legs, and I really like the durable, sturdy look that a big smooth chestplate gives to the design, so I didn’t want to interrupt the shape with rockets. Plus, the back jets would look like boobs if you put them in front, and that would be both inappropriate and silly.
Also glowing circles.
What are these glowing circles? Why are they there? I put them there because the glowing-green hourglass insignia would stand out and be real distracting if it were the only glowing green part. In my head the glowing circles were ‘Time-Inductors’, which, when active, would anchor the wearer into a fixed point in time, and thus prevent enemies from from going back and killing them ask kids or something. This is stupid because A) it doesn’t fit with the rules of time travel I established and B) why would you have them exposed on the outside of the suit where anyone could shoot them and C) why would you need 6 of them and D) why are 4 of them so smol?
Also the joints.
This is by far the worst offense on the list, if for no other reason than because I have this same complaint with most power armor in fiction in general. As far as I have seen of games and movies, mechanized suits are NEVER (with the exception of Aliens and Edge of Tomorrow and Call of Duty) depicted with structurally sound joints. This thing is supposed to be running and jumping and fighting, you know? It probably weighs about 600lbs! ALL that weight and a lot MORE has to be supported in its entirety by whatever mechanisms are present in the hips and arms. It has to be robust, and I did NOT draw it so.
I want you to specifically look at the hips and upper arm here. Observe how the pauldrons are connected to the gauntlets, and the pelvis to the thighs, by tall stacks of silver rings just like Titanium Man™. Artistically, these tall stacks of silver rings serve several purposes: A) they make the armor plates stand out nicely by contrasting the black, B) they make the audience think “Oh well, something mechanical is happening there it must be high-tech”, C) they make the suit as a whole look slightly more cartoony and comic-book-y, by calling to mind things like Winter Soldier and retro astronauts and Titanium Man™.
( Titanium Man™:)
These tall stacks of silver rings make no sense. Are there supposed to be linkages beneath them with motors? An artificial layer of muscles? There’s hardly (probably not) room for the wearer’s own arms and legs inside them, let alone anything powered. Maybe the rings themselves are filled with hydraulic fluid or something? That’s needlessly complicated and needlessly fragile, and would break the wearer’s own bones if it malfunctioned, which would be bad.
EGGGHEHEEHHEHH
Hmm.
You may have guessed already, but this suit was designed mainly based on aesthetics. But there is good news! I just drew out a bunch of concepts redesigning it! So I might post that soon.
